He was a young man with close-cropped black hair, fine dark eyes and an
aquiline nose with a deep furrow between the eyebrows. The crispness of
his hair and the high cheekbones gave a suggestion of Jewish blood. His
face was very pale and his lips were blueish. I saw the perspiration
glistening on his forehead.

"Thank you, it is nothing," the man replied in the same breathless
voice. "I am only a little out of breath with carrying my bag upstairs.
That's all."

"You must have arrived just before I did," I said, remembering the cab
that had driven away from the hotel as I drove up.

"That is so," he answered, pushing open his door as he spoke. He
disappeared into the darkness of the room and suddenly the door shut
with a slam that re-echoed through the house.

As I had calculated, my room was next door to his, the end room of the
corridor. It smelt horribly close and musty and the first thing I did
was to stride across to the windows and fling them back wide.

I found myself looking across a dark and narrow canal, on whose
stagnant water loomed large the black shapes of great barges, into the
windows of gaunt and weather-stained houses over the way. Not a light
shone in any window. Away in the distance the same clock as I had heard
before struck the quarter--a single, clear chime.

It was the regular bedroom of the _maison meublée_--worn carpet,
discoloured and dingy wallpaper, faded rep curtains and mahogany